Oor Nicola Sturgeon thread.

[Detournement]

 

After 30 years of bleating about Norway, sovereign wealth funds and Thatcher stealing our oil from Nationalists the Scottish Neoliberal Party privatise the seabed and wind power to barely a whimper of protest. 

This is what an independent Scotland will look like if Sturgeon is involved in it's foundation. A lucrative buffet for multinational corpations who will loot our commons. 

[Benjamin_Nevis]

11 minutes ago, Detournement said:

 

After 30 years of bleating about Norway, sovereign wealth funds and Thatcher stealing our oil from Nationalists the Scottish Neoliberal Party privatise the seabed and wind power to barely a whimper of protest. 

This is what an independent Scotland will look like if Sturgeon is involved in it's foundation. A lucrative buffet for multinational corpations who will loot our commons. 

The absolute state of this pish 

[Detournement]

14 minutes ago, Day of the Lords said:

The absolute state of this pish 

Aye it's terrible. 

She promised a national energy company then binned the idea and now she is selling off our natural assets in a manner which will bring very little benefit to Scotland. 

[strichener]

On 16/01/2022 at 03:25, Zern said:

The committee findings were that the accusations that Nicola Sturgeon had misled parliament or breached the ministerial code were unfounded.

The committee then cleared her of wrongdoing. The vote of no confidence failed. She was re-elected again and continues.

Not even Alex Salmond is interested in arguing this further.

None of this leads me to conclude that Nicola Sturgeon is more untrustworthy or dishonest than Johnson.

If anything. The way she referred herself to the committee and the cross-party nature and independence of its setup leads me to think that Nicola is more honest than Johnson. Nicola avoided a political hot potato with a former colleague and made certain to distance herself from any influence in the investigation.

Johnson abolished the Westminster ministerial standards committee when it found that his mate Owen Paterson had broken the rules. The committee in that case didn't even demand Owen resign. It was a merely a 4 week suspension. Johnson didn't dispute that the ministerial code had been breached either. His issue was that there should be no consequences for his mate. And in short order there weren't any.

Of the two. I think Nicola comes out with a better record on conduct with regards to ministerial standards committees.

If anything it makes me like her more.

Which committee are you referring to?  It certainly isn't the one convened by the Scottish Parliament.

The committee clearly stated that Nicola Sturgeon "misled the Scottish Parliament".  Whilst they stopped short if using the word knowingly, your account of the committee findings are, what is the word - delusional.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by strichener

[sophia]

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

Aye it's terrible. 

She promised a national energy company then binned the idea and now she is selling off our natural assets in a manner which will bring very little benefit to Scotland. 

You are aware that the energy company proposal was for the retailing of electricity aren't you?

In the absence of a burgeoning and modern CEGB, I'm not at all sure how in 2022 that there is any other way to build these projects.

For the lifetime of the various offshore power stations, I do think the benefits will be measured as something more positive than "very little"

[Detournement]

The original public energy company proposal wasn't just retail. 

[renton]

1 minute ago, Detournement said:

The original public energy company proposal wasn't just retail. 

Do you have the original link? I cannot remember the details of thr first proposal.

[sophia]

3 minutes ago, Detournement said:

The original public energy company proposal wasn't just retail. 

 We are committed to delivering, in partnership with local authorities, a public energy company offering retail energy supply by the end of this current Parliament (March 2021).

[Glen Sannox]

9 hours ago, Detournement said:

 

After 30 years of bleating about Norway, sovereign wealth funds and Thatcher stealing our oil from Nationalists the Scottish Neoliberal Party privatise the seabed and wind power to barely a whimper of protest. 

This is what an independent Scotland will look like if Sturgeon is involved in it's foundation. A lucrative buffet for multinational corpations who will loot our commons. 

She was challenged about this on SKY this morning. Potentially ending up reliant on Putin for energy after years of droning on about our resources. Six years ago they tried to sell Indy to us based on oil, now they can’t even bring themselves to mention the dreaded O word.

[Billy Jean King]

Aye it's terrible. 
She promised a national energy company then binned the idea and now she is selling off our natural assets in a manner which will bring very little benefit to Scotland. 

How exactly do you "sell" wind or waves ???

[Detournement]

51 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

9 hours ago, Detournement said:

Aye it's terrible. 
She promised a national energy company then binned the idea and now she is selling off our natural assets in a manner which will bring very little benefit to Scotland. 

How exactly do you "sell" wind or waves ???

Are you really this dumb?

[Detournement]

Even wee Pat is too embarrassed to tweet about this. 

It's a genuine Thatcher moment from Sturgeon but most SNP members/voters don't realise what is happening. 

[welshbairn]

Just now, Detournement said:

Even wee Pat is too embarrassed to tweet about this. 

It's a genuine Thatcher moment from Sturgeon but most SNP members/voters don't realise what is happening. 

How could the Scottish Government raise the money to develop North Sea windfarms themselves when they aren't allowed to borrow?

[HeartsOfficialMoaner]

They can't win Independence being a protest party, they can by being the party of the Establishment. Win over the middle classes and it's game over.

[Zern]

9 hours ago, strichener said:

Which committee are you referring to?  It certainly isn't the one convened by the Scottish Parliament.

The committee clearly stated that Nicola Sturgeon "misled the Scottish Parliament".  Whilst they stopped short if using the word knowingly, your account of the committee findings are, what is the word - delusional.

 

I am referring to the report from the investigation:

Referral+-+report+-++redacted+version.pdf (www.gov.scot)

Which considered the allegations made against the First Minister including whether she misled the Scottish Parliament.

The conclusion was that she did not.

[Billy Jean King]

Are you really this dumb?

Clearly I must be as today was basically a license sale, permission to site turbines. No idea how you are viewing this as some huge scandal.

[sophia]

1 hour ago, Billy Jean King said:

1 hour ago, Detournement said:

Are you really this dumb?

Clearly I must be as today was basically a license sale, permission to site turbines. No idea how you are viewing this as some huge scandal.

I'm not at all sure there is a grasp of the detail at all there.

We've got a windfall of cash from developers for the rights to take proposed wind farms through the planning process.

There's nothing not to like.

 

[Saltire]

7 hours ago, Detournement said:

The original public energy company proposal wasn't just retail. 

It was focused on retail with the option to move into generation should that be desired. Post privatization, the energy landscape is very complex. Only Scottish Power is vertically integrated now (generation, transmission, distribution and retail under a single owner) in the south of Scotland.

Energy transmission and distribution assets and operational responsibilities are spread across a small number of license holders (three transmission and 14 distribution for electricity and a similar split for natural gas). Each has a use of system charge for transporting energy to our homes, businesses or consumers which are added to our energy bills, which is how those companies earn their incomes. There are many generators trading in the market but a severely contracting number of retail suppliers

As is all too apparent from the recent spate of energy supplier failures, the ability to buy gas and power in advance and hedge prices is key to surviving. A publicly owned provider would need to function in the same way, a complex model for a state owned company and fraught with challenges on fairness in the market with the taxpayer potentially bailing it out if required.

In the generation space, the ability to generate and sell into the market is also complex with various contracts in place including ROCs, CFDs, STOR, Balancing Mechanism etc as well as simply selling at spot price. Some generators have a business model built on a split of CFD and merchant trading.

The industry is also full of joint ventures including state owned companies from other parts of the world being active here.

None of this means that there can't be Scottish Government owned energy companies or shares in joint ventures, including energy networks, which opens up an interesting conversation on earning money for a sovereign wealth fund as well as tax revenue across the energy lifecycle. After all, prior to privatization, the UK government owned just about everything, but it would not be a rapid start-up. That is before you even begin to address the debate on nationalisation of the sector.

I suspect this is a debate that will be expanded into the broader independence debate. I'm looking forward to that as I have a few opinions in this space. 

 

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, sophia said:

I'm not at all sure there is a grasp of the detail at all there.

We've got a windfall of cash from developers for the rights to take proposed wind farms through the planning process.

There's nothing not to like.

 

Ok Maggie. 

[Saltire]

35 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Ok Maggie. 

This forum is absolutely about debate, but I'm not sure if you've fully appreciated the scale of this auction round. The figure awarded are for 25GW of offshore wind generation capacity, 5 or 6 times Scotland's peak demand. The capital cost for offshore wind is coming down quickly but recent capital costs are between £2m and £4m per MW installed. Extrapolating this:

Total Capital costs £50bn - 100bn

Scotland's GDP in 2020 was around £150bn

Scotland's (understated in my opinion) tax revenue in 2019  was around £12bn

I'm not sure where we would borrow the money required to invest on that scale on top of everything else that needs to be done in the energy transition and ongoing capital and revenue investment elsewhere. However, like our oil and gas, this resource is a bankable asset when it comes to borrowing in the bond markets

It seems to me that a fair tax regime to take revenue from these resources (and address fuel poverty) is a lower risk than trying to do it all ourselves in the public sector. Doing that is a legitimate view, but perhaps a much more difficult funding model. The key here is surely to reap the rewards of a sustainable energy source that allows Scotland to export a colossal energy surplus for income and pioneer large scale energy storage of this immense resource.

I have been involved in previous rounds of offshore auctions but not this one.